Letter to the Editor

HOW TO STOP WAR

To the Editor

In the days of yore, leaders led from the front, not sitting in front of computer monitors thousands of miles away in the bomb proof bunker called the Pentagon or the "situation room" of the White House.

To get things back on track, I propose that every politician who votes to send our children off to slaughter and be slaughtered should, by law, be required to be trained, then sent to spend six-months inside the theater of action, be it Iraq or whatever war-de-jour.

Provisions could be made for these legislators to continue to vote and legislate via secure channels on the internet. When done, the younger politicians would be issued weapons and combat gear (including body armor — but only after all the young soldiers their policies placed in harm's way have all been issued theirs). They then would routinely be ordered out on combat patrols in the same armorless Humvees our young troops are dying in.

Pols too old to go on patrol will be given a tent inside the green-zone where they can learn to live with the fear and uncertainty of rubbing shoulders with Iraqis, any of whom might just be the next vest-bomber. Their sleep won't be so solid since every random incoming rocket or mortar round has a chance to wound, maim or red-X them.

After doing their legislative work via e-mail, the older pols would be assigned to work as orderlies with the grave registration units where they can help prepare the mutilated bodies of our young for shipment back to their grieving parents. Also, health permitting, these older politicians who voted to send our youth off to "their war," must put on their blue, pin-striped suits and serve as escorts on the body-planes shuttling back and forth to the Dover body-processing-center, and then on to the homes of the dead soldiers and where they will personally present the American flag to the grieving parents in lieu of their children. (Note: The Secretary of Defense will be required to actually sign the death letters and not use his signature machine.)

If travel is deemed too hard on the aging bodies of these politician/warriors, they would be assigned to work as orderlies in MASH tents where they can clean up the body-fluids and bloody gauze created by amputation operations.

Perhaps when these spine-challenged politicians are required to see and hear and smell the reality of the armless, legless, eyeless young men and women their policies have created, they will think twice about sending them off to a war that truly, short of oil, had no cause.

It's easy to strut around saying, "Bring 'em on" when you're thousands of miles away from the awfulness of war. If we passed a resolution that stuck all those NeoCon, chicken-hawk, war-lovers in the middle of that carnage of their making, we would quickly see some real foreign-relation policy changes — especially if you told them after six months that their tour of duty was being extended.

Miguel Lanigan
Clearlake Oaks

ms notes: A "red X" is the aircraft maintenance symbol indicating that an aircraft is out of commission and unable to fly.